God

Palestine (the state consisting of both Gaza and the West Bank) is a country which is 6,020 square kilometers (about 2,324 square miles). It has a population of 3,761,646 people which means those 3,761,646 people live on approximately .0006 square miles of land per person (or about .38 acres). The country is slightly smaller than the state of Delaware which only has a population of 925,749. So about the only thing Palestine and Delaware have in common is that no one really wants to go to either one.

Within Palestine, there is the infamous Gaza strip, which is located in the southwest corner of Israel. The Gaza strip is completely and utterly isolated from the rest of Palestine, which is weird. But then again, Alaska and Hawaii are part of the United States. The Gaza strip is a measly 365 square kilometers (about 140.9 square miles) but has an overwhelming 1,416,539 person occupancy. This means that every person in the Gaza strip is living on approximately .00009 square miles of land (or about .05 acres). To put that into perspective, the Gaza strip is about the size of Mobile, Alabama which only has a population of 212,237 people.

Israel, on the other hand, is 20,770 square kilometers (about 8,019.34 square miles) which still isn’t huge by any means. It has a population of 6,426,679 people, which is less than double that of Palestine. Those people get to live on approximately .0012 square miles of land (or about .77 acres). Israel is slightly smaller than the state of New Jersey, which has a higher population (about 8.89 million). Unfortunately for New Jersey residents, they have less acreage than Israelis. Although they don’t have to deal with Delaware launching rockets into their beach homes, so New Jersey takes the win on that one, and not much else.

But what would it be like to live in a New Jersey where Delaware did launch rockets into beach homes for weeks or months at a time every few years? Or what would it be like to live in a massively overcrowded and underfunded Delaware where New Jersey was lobbing mortars into residents’ paltry little space? Personally, I think it would be pretty shitty, on both sides.

Now, add to the mix that New Jersey is way better funded than Delaware and has it all backed into a corner and poor little Mobile is all on its own, even more overcrowded and underfunded, cut off from the rest of its state. Really shitty.

These conditions are likely what caused so many more Palestinians to die in the latest round of conflicts between Gaza and Israel than did Israelis. Israelis have their massively effective (and hugely expensive) Iron Dome defense system and Palestinians living in Gaza have…hopes and prayers. You can also kind of see why the Palestinians living in Gaza are so hell-bent on hopes and prayers. When a rocket is coming at you, and God is pretty much all you have to hopefully save your home, your family, and your friends, you have to cling pretty damn hard to God. Like radical extremist hard, in some cases.

By the end of the summer this year, 1,915 people in Gaza had been killed by Israeli forces and 67 people had been killed in Israel. This count included hundreds of children on the Gaza side and only three total civilians on the Israeli side.

While the media debated about Israeli claims that Hamas was using women and children as “human shields” and people tried to debate the casualties on both sides, while politicians played the blame game and US and Egyptian negotiators likely beat their heads against the desk trying to get an end to the violence, the death tolls can be attributed to simple math.

There are too many people in Gaza and there is too little space. Israel is way bigger than Gaza and way better funded. Israel has a missile defense system that keeps them safe and Gaza does not. Israelis have places to hide, Palestinians living in Gaza barely have space to move.

Source: http://kyforeclosurewarehouse.com/index.php?id=5 This house (available for you to own in Kentucky!) has .05 acres of land. That does not include the sidewalk. It’s just the little one bedroom, one bath home and that little strip of green you see in front of the cement barrier. That’s how much room each Palestinian in Gaza has to live on. Just that. Actually, they probably get much less, because they still need space for markets and schools and hospitals and mosques, etc. etc.

It’s basically like shooting fish in a barrel. The Israelis can’t help but kill civilians. But that is not a justification for the violence. Or for the U.S. not only supporting it, but funding it. The United States of America gives Israel $8.5 million dollars in military aid EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. In addition, the US contributed $504 million to Israel’s missile defense system (the Iron Dome). We did not contribute anything toward keeping Palestinians safe. And that’s part of the reason that they’re dying. And it’s surely one of the many reasons they’re pissed and trying to run Israelis over with their cars and stabbing innocent people to death. Again, that is not justification for the violence on their part either.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole cannot be summed up into simple economics, unfortunately. There’s a vast array of problems, ethnic, religious, social, which span back since the creation of Israel. But one thing is glaringly obvious – killing each other isn’t working. It’s just not. For the life of me I cannot understand how people in power (both in Israel and Palestine) cannot see that. Here you have Hamas saying it “blesses the action” of radicalized Muslims running over Jews with their cars and saying what is happening is “pushing us to prepare for war.” Fantastic. Because killing civilians and preparing for war are totally things you should want for your fish in the barrel. Except they’re not fish. They’re innocent people. And many, many children.

It’s not much more cheerful on the Israeli side either. 16-year old Mohammed was abducted and burned alive by Israelis in what was deemed a “revenge attack.” This happened in July of 2014. The US as a whole might not have its shit together, but at least we stopped burning people alive by the 1700s.

The violence in Israel and Palestine is not going to stop through violence. Violence begets violence. It’s a pattern in history we have seen time and time again. It’s time for Israel and Palestine to stop killing one another, come to the table, and get a two-state solution that works for everyone. It’s time for us to stop funding either side until they come to the table, once and for all, for a permanent solution, not just a temporary cease-fire. And if the people in power now won’t do it, it’s time for the Israeli and Palestinian people to find someone who can. Their children’s lives are literally on the line. And God isn’t going to save them. A truce will though. A truce for God to smile down on. Because I doubt He likes seeing the blood of His children spilled in the holiest of lands. He made that land sacred. It’s time to stop sullying it with the blood of innocents.